ultimatum from general contractor

[Megan Hoyt]

Our contractor resigned before the project was finished. We ran out of cash because we had accepted his overages instead of questioning them like we had a legal right to do, and it took a couple of months to get new financing. But he had 90% of our money anyway. We negotiated with him a bit and he took $15,000 that he said we still owed him (questionable) off our bill and told us it would take about that to complete the project and to get someone else to do it -- maybe even his subcontractors. It has taken more than twice that and at reasonable prices. We were just too new to know. When we asked him to come out and fix the electrical problem our new electrician told us about -- a problem he had caused, he added back the $15,000 to our bill and told us on a Friday that if we did not agree to absolve him of any further obligation it would be payable immediately as of Monday at 5 pm. It was a weekend, so we couldn't show the letter to our attorney and we couldn't get through to him by 5 pm yesterday. So his deadline passed and he added back the amount onto our balance (which was zero). Is that legal to do? Send an ultimatum like that when faced with mistakes he had made? Are we obligated to pay this amount? Can he simply put it back on the bill like that and put a tight timeframe on such a big decision?